Impact

“Metacognition is one of those words that I have struggled to get my head around and fully get to grips with. Your session has been the only time where I have seen it 'brought to life' and seen it in practice.”

“The most powerful innovation I have come across in 23 years of teaching…”

“During a teaching career of over 20 years, there have been very few initiatives that have had as great a positive impact on my practice.”

We’re delighted at the feedback that thinking moves is receiving. Scroll down to see more of what teachers and students say. You can also see who’s on the “Roll of Honour” - pioneer schools who have embedded the scheme across their curriculum and ethos.

At EYFS

Primary school

Secondary/Sixth Form

Roll of Honour

A very conservative estimate of all the countries currently using Thinking Moves, using data from our subscriber lists.

At EYFS (ages 3-5)

“The impact of metacognition in school has been profound… Data analysis provided evidence by July 2021 that areas of the curriculum with a Thinking Moves foundation saw greater rates of progress.”

“Thinking Moves was initially introduced into our school curriculum in autumn 2019 and we now have it fully embedded into all tiers of school life. The impact of metacognition in school has been profound. Communication and thinking strategies are now delivered with conscious intent, and children aged 3 and 4 are using these moves to own and manipulate their learning. Data analysis provided evidence by July 2021 that areas of the curriculum with a Thinking Moves foundation saw greater rates of progress. This has led to the roll out of Thinking Moves across the whole curriculum.

Gradually it became clear that mathematical skills progression was being facilitated by the conscious application of metacognition. As data below evidences, fewer children struggled to move beyond barriers to learning in maths than in other areas.

The language of Thinking Moves has become part of discourse in school. The subtle interplay between cognition and emotion has enabled staff to seamlessly manipulate metacognition into a tool to support emotional regulation and prosocial behaviour. This means that metacognition is not seen simply as twenty-six petals to sprinkle throughout a lesson, but instead metacognition is seen as the roots that anchor all interactions. The way we think, speak to each other, behave with each other, use materials, interact with the world . . . is rooted in metacognition.

Amanda Hubball, Nursery Teacher, Derbyshire

At primary school (ages 5-11)

“We are an international primary school that has around 600 students and 65 teachers and teaching assistants from all over the world with a significant number learning English as a second language. Our curriculum for Maths and English follows the UK curriculum with the other subjects being taught through topics using the International Primary Curriculum.

A small cadre of enthusiastic teachers took the initial online Thinking Moves training with Roger in 2021.

Their response to the training was hugely enthusiastic, thanks to the simplicity of the Thinking Moves approach and Roger’s practical and informative delivery. This group then began the process of leading Thinking Moves in our school and the steady integration of the Thinking Moves scheme into all areas of learning. The approach has been quickly accepted and valued by students and teachers. The simple and straightforward system makes metacognition easy for the students to understand and is simple for those who are new to English.

Thinking Moves is now being quickly and enthusiastically integrated and used by all our staff throughout the curriculum from our Kindergarten to Year 6. It is also being used in our varied specialist subjects ranging from Physical Education, Modern Foreign Languages, Indonesian to Drama. From the week of professional development we have developed a new Reading curriculum that links Thinking Moves to the teaching of reading comprehension skills. We have conducted a survey of students to use as a benchmark for the adoption of the moves, and Thinking Moves is evident around the school being used in lesson planning/preparation and observed in lessons.

Obviously, the real benefit of Thinking Moves is increasing the children's ability to explain their thinking and it is encouraging from visiting lessons, listening to their discussions and looking at our students' written responses that the moves are becoming ingrained and part of the language of learning in our school. Our next step is to evaluate this process further and to develop the role of metacognition and self-regulation into our developing social and emotional learning programme and the evolution of agency focused curriculum, which we have begun this year.

Richard Rigby, Primary teacher, Jarkata

“The simple and straightforward system makes metacognition easy for the students to understand.”

“Our primary school which follows the IB curriculum has been implementing Thinking Moves A-Z metacognition strategies since 2019. We have seen tremendous growth in our students’ ability to explain and evaluate their own thinking as well as evaluate and appreciate the contribution of their peers. This in turn has strengthened our students’ ability to reason and make progress in inquiry within the PYP framework.

Students have been quick to identify when they, their peers, and teachers use the thinking moves and often shout out, “That’s a Thinking Move!”. Teachers and students alike use the hand gestures that represent each thinking move. Teachers embed “thinking grooves” in all activities so that children can experience logical groupings of metacognition strategies. Students take action as they lead weekly assembly activities centered around teaching their peers 2 Thinking Moves per week.

Teachers have expressed their enjoyment incorporating the Thinking moves in their classes. They have remarked about how easily they can be embedded into any topic and how students are now able to use them naturally and without prompting. New teachers to our school are always very impressed at how well the students can remember them and how the students are able to continue using them over the span of their primary school journey.”

Vanessa Dewey, Primary teacher, Shanghai

“We have seen tremendous growth in our students’ ability to explain and evaluate their own thinking as well as evaluate and appreciate the contribution of their peers.”

Read case study

“The simple and straightforward system makes metacognition easy for the students to understand.”

Before we began with Thinking Moves

Before we took on Thinking Moves, our approach to metacognition. Very limited and inconsistent. Most staff found metacognition is a giant topic to touch!

The impact

Thinking Moves help activate students' awareness of hard thinking. Students are passionate of doing the actions and often spontaneously use the words from Thinking Moves to respond to the learning.

Thinking Moves is simple and comprehensive. Easy for teachers and students to start. It a good tool to help teachers plan their lesson with different levels of thinking challenges and help teacher evaluate whether they embed enough opportunities to activate students' thinking in their lessons.

Daisy Xie
Deputy Head of Primary at Hiba Academy Shanghai

Read case study

Read case study

School Improvement Liverpool (SIL) supports educational settings to enable children and young people to be safe, develop, learn and achieve. To this end, we have developed a collaboration with Dialogue Works with a view to enhancing academic progress, especially for lower attaining and disadvantaged students.

In 2020 SIL took their first steps by training teachers from 20 settings in the understanding and implementation of the TM A-Z framework. However, covid and the lockdown hampered the success of this project, despite some early positive feedback.

When in 2021, Liverpool City Council produced their Education Improvement Plan, priority was to ensure the mental health and emotional wellbeing of children and young people are supported in order that they can flourish in their education - included the use of metacognition to support wellbeing.

We explored how Thinking Moves A-Z can be used not only to support learning, but also to self-regulate and therefore enable young people to lead healthier and more ambitious lives in which they can truly thrive.

“During a teaching career of over 20 years, there have been very few initiatives that have had as great a positive impact on my practice as Thinking Moves A to Z. It has transformed the way I teach and the way I encourage my pupils to learn.”

“We have been using Thinking Moves for several years now and it is always a pleasure to see the children using it in their lessons every day. In every lesson observation and learning walk, we look for evidence of Thinking Moves and we see it every time. The teachers use verbal and physical prompts to help the children but many can be seen using Thinking Moves without prompting.” - Head of School, Liverpool

“During a teaching career of over 20 years, there have been very few initiatives that have had as great a positive impact on my practice as Thinking Moves A to Z. It has transformed the way I teach and the way I encourage my pupils to learn. Having said this, Thinking Moves didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know about teaching and learning; I have exerted very little effort in tweaking the methods I use to teach. It simply gave a name to every method of thinking that we all use in our everyday life; a label that I could direct children to use to help them with their learning, triggered by a memorable action children find easy to respond to.

The thing I love most about Thinking Moves is that it enables my pupils to take control of their own learning and access learning opportunities independently. Once they are familiar with the 26 different ways of thinking (and their innumerable synonyms), pupils spontaneously use this knowledge to independently apply all types of thinking to all scenarios of their studies. To me, Thinking Moves A to Z is emphatically empowering!” - KS2 Class Teacher, Liverpool

“It is not often that teachers are given a tool that can be applied and adapted to every area of the curriculum and every age group. The appeal is in its simplicity and its ease to both teach and learn.” - KS1 Class Teacher, Liverpool

“I use the PICTURE move the most. I use it when I read to help me imagine what is happening in the story. I use it when I need to set out my work neatly - I can picture what my finished work should look like.” - Maria aged 8

“In every single lesson, I use LOOK/LISTEN. It is important to do this because we need to know what the teacher is showing us and telling us so that we can learn to do it ourselves” – Riona aged 7

“I like using all of the Thinking Move actions to remind me what they are. My favourite one is TEST because this helps me to check my work like in spellings, I can check if I have spelled the word right or in Maths, I can check I have done my work right.” – Kamile aged 10

“When I am stuck, I ask my teacher a QUESTION. If I didn’t ask a question, I wouldn’t know what to do so it’s important I ask questions to help me understand better.” – Olivia aged 9

“Thinking Moves helps me in lots of ways. I use Think AHEAD and think BACK lots. This helps me remember what I did last time to help me with the work I do this time” - Leo aged 10

“I always use the ZOOM IN move because it helps me to focus on the important things I need to remember to help me learn new things” - Nevaeh G aged 8

“Thinking Moves are instrumental in promoting metacognition in the classroom.”

Before we began with Thinking Moves…

Before we took on Thinking Moves, our school's level of understanding and teaching of metacognition wasn't great. Staff had an understanding of what metacognition was but lacked the knowledge and tools to effectively implement it and make it visible to learners.

What I like most about Thinking Moves

Thinking Moves are instrumental in promoting metacognition in the classroom. They provide concrete strategies for both teachers and students to not only understand metacognitive processes but also to actively engage in and practice them. What I like best about Thinking Moves is that they make learning more visible and accessible, helping students to reflect on their thinking, understand their learning processes, and develop skills to manage their own learning more effectively. This empowers learners to take charge of their education, leading to deeper understanding and improved academic performance.

Melissa Meikle
Literacy Lead, Wellington College International, Tianjin

Read case study

At secondary and sixth form (11-18)

“It is the most powerful innovation I have come across in 23 years of teaching.”

“It is a very straightforward process. The moves are embedded in lessons, used in learning objectives, used to deepen questioning and referred to in feedback.

The framework is so agile it can be used in all contexts; it provides a common vocabulary for students to be able to unpack and process what is being asked of them. The school’s 10% increase in high grades in summer 2022 corresponds with the introduction of Thinking Moves, and a significant increase in higher order thinking skills exemplified below:

Our EPQ students are much better at analysing their own planning, monitoring and reviewing. Applying the Thinking Moves to the process students go through instinctively, staff are better equipped to signpost the kind of thinking that has taken place e.g. how they have thought about purpose (AHEAD), ranked ideas (ORDER), considered wider impact (ZOOM OUT), changed their mind (YIELD). Students then transfer their understanding of how to break down the steps of a decision to their work in the EPQ and are achieving a much more detailed level of reflection at each stage of their project.

Other specific uses of the Thinking Moves A-Z framework at our school include the creation of a reading strategy which has been adapted for both T-level Education and Childcare students and for EPQ students, a more systematic approach to tackling questions in Science A-level exams and the refining of provision in learner support.”

Maria Coyle, Religious Studies Teacher, Notre Dame Catholic Sixth Form College, Leeds

“It’s very easy to talk about thinking AHEAD and thinking BACK not just in terms of Geography but their whole GCSE range of subjects.”

Jeremy Reynolds, Geography teacher, Luton

Their simplicity yet power (ie their strapline!) is a big strenngth. Students can readily learn them and use them in all aspects of their learning. As an A Level Geography, they fit so well with the content and how I teach and enhance all apsects of teaching and learning. Teaching sixthformers, we are always encouraging them to become independent learners and TM is perfect for this!

“As soon as I started using them, it became a central part on how I structure notes, plans, and answers. They help with prioritising and putting together GROUPS of information, creating links” between one topic and another.”

Jeremy Reynolds, above, shares how his students have been using Thinking Moves…

Give some examples of how you have been using Thinking Moves in your studies.

I use Thinking Moves in my essay planning. I DIVIDE and CONNECT points for/against. I WEIGH UP and JUSTIFY in assess questions. I use KEYWORD, GROUP, and EXEMPLIFY in my revision when making flashcards for different questions. I also use ZOOM IN / OUT and SIZE when writing about issues going from a local to a national or international scale.

When making revision guides/notes I make sure to ORDER them in chronological order. Starting new topics, I look AHEAD to get an independent start to the work.

I use Thinking Moves to organise my notes. For example, I used GROUP and HEADLINE to create notes on certain sub-topics in the water cycle such as the cycle, impacts and case studies.

I also use the AHEAD and BACK moves to EXPLAIN social policies discussed in sociology. I look at why they were created in the past and how they have been changed or will need to change in the future.

In Geography I’ve been GROUPING different types of renewable and non-renewable power in consideration of the carbon emissions they release or reduce. In my other subjects such as Human Biology, I have looked BACK into the previous topics to help complete my coursework.

Has this been prompted by your teacher or you using them independently?

My teacher prompts us in class but I find myself using them independently in other subjects and in my revision.

Although my teacher introduced me to them, I have used them independently after that.

It was initially introduced to us by our teacher, but now has become more of a habit to incorporate it throughout our pieces of work.

Have you found them useful?

Yes, they have helped me organise my thoughts and structure my answers in a much clearer way.

Other than helping structure notes, they also allow me to approach QUESTIONS in a different way.

I have found them useful in understanding how information can be applied into exam answers and broken down into categories, such as ZOOMING OUT to get the wider picture or ZOOMING IN to focus on specific details.

As soon as I started using them, it became a central part on how I structure notes, plans, and answers. They help with prioritising and putting together GROUPS of information, creating links between one topic and another.

What do you think are the most powerful and effective things about Thinking Moves?

The simplicity, they are basic words that seem quite obvious but they have made a big difference because I can think about organising my thoughts and answers explicitly.

They make you think more in depth and make your notes and writing more memorable and make them more interesting.

They provide a way for me to dive deeper into a topic with the knowledge I already have and find new links I may not have found otherwise.

The variety and depth of them. When you think about what thinking move is being used there is always a perfect one to describe your actions.

I think that they are particularly useful to use when you feel unsure or muddled, as they can help you to plan not only how to structure the layout of the information but also they can be helpful in EXPLAINING and evaluating the information itself.

The most effective thing about the Thinking Moves is the fact that they help when you are stuck with a topic or a question and you are able to use the Thinking Moves as a guide.